oh hot damn

After a huge absence, photos from my Scotland trip in February.  And you KNOW I'm going to stretch these into several entries to make more content. 

The challenges of shooting landscapes weren't lost on me--I don't have a dedicated wide angle lens, so shots on my 18-55mm just looked so...uninspiring.  Compared to what I could see--miles and miles of countryside and mountain and rocky moorland--the camera's view just turned out so blah.  The pictures were flat and boring.  What I wanted to express--the gorgeous, open cragginess--didn't translate to two dimensions.

I honestly don't know anything about shooting landscapes (just that it's hard) because I've really never tried, and I wish I had known earlier the value of closing my camera's aperture all the way down and shooting with a slower shutter.  The results I got from that were so much crisper (duh Joceline, more depth of field) and the colors much richer. 

In all honesty I almost always shoot with the aperture the openest it can go, since I usually am shooting people, and I like a blurry background to add depth.  I didn't even think to change it when I started taking pictures of mountainsides and the like.  I just figured, the camera will focus itself on the farthest object, and if anything, something out of focus will just show depth.  Wrong!  Depth in a photo doesn't come from differences in focus, it comes from taking a picture of a scene with depth in it.  Duh again.  Taking a picture of something that looks good will yield a good picture.  I can't expect a camera to focus on a landscape the way my eyes do--unless I tell it to.  Seeking out a landscape with a focal point, a lot of depth, or a good composition is all on me.  Maybe that's why I've always preferred doing macro photography--it's easy to take a dynamic photo when you get up really close to something. 

Oh well.  I love the photos from my trip anyway, because they remind me of one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  The first is a mountain we climbed, Meall a Ghiubais, that was much steeper in person (trust me).  The second is a detail shot of the delicate frost that edged every fallen leaf and bit of bracken that lined the way.